the nanny search

A couple of months ago, we finally started Diya back up at daycare after keeping her home for months.  She rotated around between me, Gregg, and my mom while she was in her spica cast, but after that, no one had any time off left so it was back to daycare.  I struggled a lot with the decision because I just couldn't imagine how she'd do with her brace.  I even ended up postponing my return back to work one week because the week after she got her brace was pretty hellish.  She was cranky and clearly in pain.  We thought the brace would be easier than the cast but it really wasn't at first. 

For one thing, she came out of the cast looking disgusting.  Big old stains across her legs where poop had collected and we had been unable to reach while she was in the cast.  Her legs were infected in places, an area under her knees looked like there might be mold growing.  AND to top things off, they cut her with the saw when they removed the cast.  She screamed bloody murder the entire time they were removing it and didn't stop for a long long time after.  Between the trauma and the scars and the pus, the first week was horrible.  Gregg even wished we could get the cast back.  The brace was hard to take off for each diaper change.  She seemed uncomfortable in it at night and woke up every 45 minutes to an hour.  I couldn't bring myself to take her back to daycare like that, so I took off that whole first week. 

When she finally did go back, I wasn't much happier.  Our daycare, that I'd always had a love-hate relationship with anyway, had grown in our absence.  Before we had removed her, it was a brand new daycare with few kids.  Diya was actually the first baby in the infant room and had the teacher's attention to herself for a long time.  Then two more kids started.  One was quite a bit older and spent a chunk of his time with the toddlers in the next room.  The other was a mellow, low-maintenance chubby little boy a few months younger than Diya.  They got along really well and things still seemed ok.  I didn't love the teacher, but she was caring and that seemed to be the most important thing.  The things that bugged me -- Diya wouldn't nap there.  And anytime she fussed, the teacher seemed to just want to give her a bottle even when it wasn't time to eat.  I spent a lot of time working on Diya's routine during my maternity leave and subsequent time off periods.  One day back at daycare and it all went frustratingly kaput. 

When we came back after Diya's cast had been removed, the problems had magnified because now there were more babies.  And the frazzled well-meaning teacher could not keep up.  I'd visit during lunch and it would be chaos.  Babies would be crying in their playpens, and she'd be running around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to figure out who was up for a bottle.  One might be getting fed but the others would just be hanging out by themselves.  My child was always in good spirits and seemed perfectly content on her own.  But if I hadn't shown up during lunch every single day for a week and put her down myself for her 2nd nap, I kind of doubt she'd have gotten one.  Against CA regulations, the daycare was understaffed.  There were chunks of time when it'd be just this one teacher to 5 or more kids (1:4 is the required ratio). 

It was a stressful time for me.  I was trying to get back into the swing of things at work but couldn't focus.  I'd come pick Diya up every day and be dismayed to realize she had slept for maybe half hour to an one hour tops.  At home, she takes 2 naps, for a total of AT LEAST 3 hours but usually more.  Her bottles would have been given to her randomly so there never seemed to be a pattern each day.  I'd have to repeat her schedule to them every morning and if I wasn't exact, I'd find things would be done differently (solids first, then milk, nap before anything else, etc).  I felt like a micromanager but didn't know what else to do. 

So Gregg and I started looking for a nanny.  Which brought on its own drama.  For one, they are super expensive.  And at first, we seemed to be mostly interviewing duds.  I called one Indian woman who didn't even speak enough English to talk on the phone, she had to put her teenage daugther on.  We interviewed this Vietnamese lady whose English-speaking skills were also pretty poor.  But what ended the interview for me was when she said that her last baby had refused to eat anything.  I asked her how she'd handled it and she said that she had prayed a lot.  One girl told me that she hadn't really worked with infants but "was sure she could figure it out."  Another sounded illegal and asked if we would be able to pay in cash.  More than a couple were freaked out by dogs.  We did though finally manage to narrow it down to a few potential candidates and started debating if we were willing to take on the payroll headache of having a household employee.  And then randomly (well, after we had a huge blowout with me going on about Gregg not taking this seriously enough), Gregg stumbled onto this daycare that was a couple of minutes from our house. 

We went to visit and I was dubious.  They seemed fine but they are a Spanish immersion program.  Hmm, I said, I don't even speak Spanish.  Am I not going to be able to understand our kid's first words?  Or not be able to communicate with her teachers?  From past experience, I have a lot to say about how Diya's days go.  More than that, all the other kids there are older than Diya.  I wondered how that would work with Diya's brace.  Would they be careful around her?  I visited one morning with Diya but couldn't get a sense of how things would go for her there.  It's a small daycare, and I guess they recently relocated.  So they're not at capacity yet.  Diya would be the only infant (again) at first.  So it was hard to know if they'd be any better about Diya's eating and napping schedule than the old place.  When I visited, I was struck by the teacher's awesome Spanish-teaching skills but had no idea how the caregiving would work. 

The director seemed good though, and Gregg seemed into the program more than I was.  I think he especially felt weird about having a stranger in our house watching our baby.  And that part didn't sit that well with me etiher.  Plus the thing is, Diya really likes other kids.  Not to mention that it would cost us more to hire a nanny for 3 days a week than we'd be paying for a full daycare.  So we decided to give it a shot. 

And I have to say that I'm HUGELY impressed (Gregg's been crowing about it for weeks now, you know it being his find and all -- never mind that he had to be prodded into looking for it but whatever).  From the beginning this daycare has been about finding Diya's routines and encouraging them.  I told them on the first day when she generally naps and haven't had to mention it since.  They experimented a bit that first week and tweaked a few things.  But since then, her daily time sheets read remarkly the same, at least as far as napping and meal times are concerned.  And amazingly, she naps at this daycare!!  Usually about 45 minutes in the morning and about 2 hours in the afternoon.  She's done better at home, but at least this is in the ballpark of what's normal.  This is something she never did well at the old daycare, even when she was the only baby there.   

She fits in well with the other kids.  It's been nice because her schedule going in was almost like what the other kids already did.  She's the only one that still takes a morning nap, but otherwise, she eats at around the same time and her second nap coincides with the afternoon nap time.  That's a huge plus.  She eats breakfast and lunch with everyone and has an afternoon snack when everyone wakes up.  Coming at the end of the day to find that she's been all over the place with the bottles and solids is something that's never happened here. 

AND, they've been great about working on developmental issues, which is something I couldn't even hope for at the old place.  If I mention something, they've already started doing it.  For instance, I'm going to be weaning soon and want Diya to be drinking from a sippy cup before I do.  Turns out they had already been working on her drinking from one before I brought it up.  Diya was constipated and before I said anything, they were pushing her to drink more water and eat more fruits.  I love that we're on the same page and they're often ahead of me.  I remember a couple of weeks ago, the teacher was telling me that the director is very strict about teaching the kids to feed themselves and drink from sippy cups.  I was a little bit worried that day, had this whole picture of them forcing a spoon into her hand and shoving it into her mouth.  OMG, what are they going to be doing to my child, I wondered.  First, they wanted to deprive her of her toys, and now THIS?  But each meal now, Diya has been demonstrating her new skills and it's pretty exciting to see how proud she is of them. 

And mostly, I love how much they seem to love her.  Maybe it's just for my benefit, but each of the teachers there has mentioned a number of times what a sweetheart she is, how she barely cries, how much she LOVES TO EAT, etc.  Clearly she saves the crying for mom, but whatever.  When I pick her up or drop her off, the older kids always start screaming her name.  I've picked her up a bunch of times now to find that the teachers have done her hair in pigtails.  It's been pretty darn cute.  

So I guess for now, the nanny search is off.

my life, continued

A few weeks ago, I got to go check out a couple of wedding dresses with my awesome future sister-in-law.  Afterwards, I went to lunch with her and her friends.  It was a lovely day in Berkely.  We were all sitting outside enjoying champagne and waiting for our meal.  Cute little restaurant, great company.  One of the other girls was telling us about how her standards of cleanliness had changed since having her daughter.  She may have been talking about the strawberry mess on her daughter's face just the day before. 

I don't know why exactly but it seemed like the perfect moment to share my similar experience on this topic.  Because just the day before, Diya had decided to throw up.  It could have been because of the teething.  It could have been because her appetite wasn't what it normally was, but Gregg thought she must be hungry and kept shoveling food in her that night.  Or it could have been the Advil we decided to give her for pain relief.  Whatever it was, one minute she was kind of hacking a little and then all of a sudden, she decided to have a lovely projectile vomit moment.  Gregg was changing her at the time. She still had her bib on from dinner, so the first thing he thought to do was push the bib up against the vomit to hold it in.  I can't even make fun of him for it because I stood nearby and did nothing. 

Anyway, so the problem with this though was that she wasn't done vomiting, so the next round of projectile went up her face since the bib was in the way.  There was vomit everywhere, including all over her face, poor thing.  Some of it probably went up her nose.  There was vomit on her eye, her hair. She was bawling up a storm and it was all Gregg and I could to do to wipe her up and calm her down.  And maybe try not to laugh.  What we should have done was just bathed at her at that point.  But it was bedtime already, and she was hysterical.  So all we could manage was a quick wipe before just deciding to put her to bed. 

It was at this moment that I saw the other girl's face and realized that for most people, vomit vs. strawberries isn't quite on the same playing field.  Huh.  Go figure. 

my life

Last Tues, we had Diya's doctor's appointment up at Stanford and the cleaning people coming to our house.  So we all left the house early and little more rushed than usual.  As always, cleaning up for the housecleaners takes longer than it's sometimes worth.  And since we had decided to try to go without  professional cleaning for a while (b/c we like to dream big like that), the house had been messier than usual.  Anyway, the point is that the dogs for once had to stay outside all the day, and we got home pretty late (after waiting almost an hour to get Diya x-rayed -- I'm not sure how long I went on and on to Gregg for about how ridiculous that was, but I'm guessing the parents of all the sick children there were all SO relieved that they were waiting with their kids instead of me.  I think even Diya handled the wait better than I did). 

When we got home, the house was clean, but either Mia or Tucker had somehow gotten into some new planters we had finally filled up.  We couldn't tell exactly who the guilty party was.  Mia was the only one that looked guilty but she's much more sensitive to our moods than Tucker is, so that doesn't say a whole lot.  We were annoyed that our hard planting work had been wasted, but it wasn't until a little while later that it occurred to Gregg that the planter boxes had contained both dirt and fertilizer.  So if they had eaten anything, they probably would have ingested fertilizer as well.  When I took them out for their walk a little later, Mia had black runs.  Tucker may have also but since he decided to run off and poop in the bushes, I couldn't tell. 

We were concerned about the whole thing (especially with the black runs) but then had a cranky infant to put to bed and dinner to deal with.  So by the time we started googling fertilizer and dogs, it was close to 9.  I know, it doesn't sound late but believe me, if you're the sleep-deprived parent of a teething infant, the evening hours getting ready for bed are pretty precious.  And by the time we realized it can be pretty toxic, it was even later.  Which is why I got to spend a good hour of that night on the phone with the ASPCA describing what had happened.  Did you know they have a poison control hotline?  And apparently it's staffed even at 10 o'clock at night.  They charge a small fee for the consultation but in return, they're willing to discuss your case with you for over an hour.  It's awesome. 

As an added bonus, you get to answer all kinds of questions about your dogs that make you feel like the wonderful pet parent that you are.  When do you think your pet ingested this fertilizer?  Uh, anywhere from 7am - 7pm.  Worst case scenario, how much do you think they could have ingested?  Up to a pound.  And it's just one dog that ate it all?  Well, we're not sure.  But just one dog had the runny poop?  Well, again, we're not sure.  And it was just the once?  Yes, oh wait, my husband just went out with a flashlight and found another hard black turd on the lawn.  So you definitely think they ingested something?  There used to be dirt in a planter box, now it's all over the ground. That's really all we know. 

After being placed on hold several times and having several vets consult on our case (turns out this specific fertilizer has a high iron content which could destroy a digestive track), they agreed that the best approach was to wait and see.  Go out with them everytime they went out and look at their poop.  If they vomit or poop blood, call back or run to the nearest emergency vet.  Etc. Etc.

Gregg said that Tucker's poop the next morning was a mix of black and brown -- like he worked through the black stuff and the later part was normal (seriously, we took the "examine all poops" directive to heart).  So clearly, it was a Bonnie and Clyde operation.  We still don't know who the ring leader was.  But fortunately, the dogs made it.  And at $65 for the phone call, I'd say that was the cheapest vet bill ever. 

cry it out

Ever since I became a parent, I've heard again and again how babies should be able to sleep through the night by the time they are about 4 months old.  That seems the magic number when the internet and (even the more reputable sources like pediatricians) seem to think that some form of training your baby to sleep is necessary.  I'm not against sleep training in principle (though I tend to think that 4 months is still a bit too early).  What's driven me insane are the numerous conversations I've had about letting your baby cry it out. 

Even if you're not a parent, you probably know the general principle. By letting your baby cry it out s/he will develop long term good sleep habits that include sleeping through the night and falling asleep on his/her own.  Actually, there are lots of variations to the theory.  Very few involve just letting the baby cry indefinitely.  Some "experts" suggest going in at periodic intervals, etc.  But basically, all the methods involve listening to your baby cry herself to sleep. 

So I know I'm going to probably ruffle a few feathers and come off pretty strong because I know that I'm in the minority of people who thinks it's all a bunch of crap.  And I'm not really sure what's prompted my sudden anger at this all of a sudden.  But I'm realizing how it comes up in almost every conversation I have with other moms.  I'll go to a party and some one will tell me how they had to resort to it.  Close friends have talked about it now for almost all of Diya's 10 months.  Last week when Diya was extra fussy, there was one day when I was home and hadn't had a bite to eat at 3pm.  My mom happened to call and made a comment about how crying is good for the baby sometimes.   The other day, I had lunch with a friend and it came up again, this time, for once, with some one who was in complete agreement with me. 

So here it is. I think crying-it-out is bull shit.  It's the easy way out, and it's cruel.  Really?  The message you want to send to your 4-month old baby is that she can cry to her heart's content and no one will come for her?  At least not after midnight.  Sure, cry earlier and we'll come get you.  Wait, what's that?  You can't tell time yet?

Does it work?  Probably.  I'm not surprised that parents who do some form of CIO report success.  But I think it's because the baby learns that no one is coming and finally just give up hope.  People say that babies learn to self soothe, but I wonder where would they learn that from?  I think they really just fall asleep out of emotional exhaustion.  And I'm sorry, I believe that my role as a parent involves making sure my child feel loved, secure, and safe.  I believe that if I work hard to create stability for Diya now, she will learn independence and confidence as she gets older.  Not because I left her alone in a crib to figure it out for herself.  Sure it might be hard at first and involve more sleepless nights in the beginning, but I'd much rather be that kind of parent. 

Also, isn't crying the only way for babies to communicate at this point?  If Diya is hurting or hungry, how else is she going to let me know?  And if I take that away from her by choosing to only respond selectively, how is that not cruel?  Honestly, I'm not sure what the theory behind CIO really is -- is it that our babies should sleep through the night but won't because nobody has taught them to?  Or that they're being devious somehow and forcing us to endure more sleepless nights just for the sake of it? 

About a month or so ago, I started noticing a little bit of a change in Diya's cries.  These days, sometimes she'll cry if something doesn't go her way.  If I take a toy away from her, for example, or you know, a dangerous  appliance, she'll wail.  This was at 9 MONTHS -- at 9 months, I started to feel like she was starting to realize that crying might get her what she wanted.  Definitely not at four months or 6.  Up until then, I don't even think she had the capacity to manipulate.  She cried because something wasn't right, whether she needed food, a diaper change, or just comfort.  And what other way could there be for her to let us know?  As a parent, isn't my job to fix that for her, whether it's at 2 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning? 

And then that whole thing about babies not needing to eat during the night after a certain point -- I don't know if I buy that either.  I remember at 4 months, Diya became extremely distracted during the day.  Suddenly, the world was too interesting for her to want to waste time nursing.  And then, at night, she'd suddenly wake up starving.  In the dark, when there were fewer distractions, she'd finally start eating properly.  What if I had started sleep training then? 

I'm not saying that some form of sleep training might not be necessary at some point.  But 4 months seems way too young, and CIO should really be the last option when you're ready to kill yourself because you're so tired.  Maybe this sounds too judgmental.  After all, I have a child who has generally had good sleep habits from the beginning.  I hear moms talking about waking up every 45 minutes.  Sure, there might be extreme circumstances that I know nothing about.  But I'll tell you this, for a child with good sleep habits, Diya still throws a lot of curve balls.  At 4 months, she went through that distraction phase that lasted a good 3 weeks or so.  At month 5, she got extremely sick and was hospitalized.  For a period of a good 2-3 weeks that month, she was at some stage of illness that had her waking up frequently.  In January, at about month 6, she started teething.  In March, she got her harness, then surgery, then cast, and then her brace.  Last week, she started teething again.  I know that I've had it relatively easy in a lot of ways, but it's not like I'm spouting off from my "peaceful nights of 8-hour sleep" mountain or anything.

And I know that there are things that we could do differently too.  Diya still needs us to rock her to sleep more often than not, at least for a few minutes until she's drowsy.   Gregg worries that she'll need this even when she's a 40-pound toddler.  And I get all tense even when she's doing her little crying fit in the middle of the night.  It lasts less than a minute and I'm already ready to run in there.  If it weren't for Gregg pointing out that her eyes are closed and that she's desperately trying to fall back asleep on her own, we would have been up a lot more this last week.  So maybe I can be a little bit too sensitive.  But you know what I've found to be the most effective sleep training method?  Time and consistency. 

I know, too, that most of my friends have tried CIO and it's not like their kids are neglected or suffering.  At some point, I suppose we all do what we have to do.  But I don't care, I still think it's all a bunch of crock. 

just a regular girl

Since Diya first got sick back in December, I feel like I've been on edge. Waiting for something worse to happen. Worrying that somehow we're doing something wrong with her, not carrying her properly in the brace, not thinking of something that we should be doing. Sometimes, I've been envious of other parents who worry about their babies sleeping or eating. Because it seems like those things you can google and find information about, sometimes way more than you really needed or wanted. A while back, I happened to be randomly reading an old email I sent to a friend when Diya was first born. It was frantic and tired and probably a tad bit dramatic.  Sometimes I miss those days, those times when a friend could simply tell me to chill out and I can do it. 

These days, my questions always seem a little more complicated and hard to find the answer to.  We have a poop explosion in the cast, how the heck do I get it all out?  Now that the cast is off, her legs are stained brown with poop, is there an easy trick to clean her?  When she wakes up screaming at night, is she feeling pain?  When I tell the day care to not sit her up without pillows and I come back to find her upright, without pillows, her legs spread out wide, did they just pop her hips back out?  There's a decent online community for parents with hip kids, but it's not quite the same.  Our doctor is awesome but doesn't really know about the day-to-day practical stuff.  Mostly, this has been all been exercise for Gregg and I in creativity and fending for ourselves. 

And honestly, I feel a bit justified for being a worrywart.  Because when I first worried that the cause of Diya's infection in December was something bigger, it turned out that it was.  And then they told us she had even more issues with her hip.  But it's hard now for me to let things go and relax.
 
So last week, when Diya started waking up at night screaming, I again went through the usual checklist.  This has happened before actually -- when we first put her in the harness, then again after the brace went on.  This time, it seemed to get worse and worse instead of improving with time.   First, it happened only occasionally. Then every couple of hours. Then maybe every 20-30 minutes. Most of the time, she let out a few screams and then fell back asleep.

It killed me not to go in there to her (well, it did initially.  Now I'm so sleep deprived that I'll doze off a bit and then realize that she did too).  But she usually has her eyes closed while she's doing this.  So going in makes it worse.  Most of the time, she's already quiet before we get in there and we just end up waking her up again.  Within a minute or two, she settles back down, tosses for a while but eventually falls asleep. Unless she loses her blankie during all the tossing and throwing.  Then it's on until Gregg goes into give it back to her. So I guess in a way, we're lucky that she falls back to sleep mostly on her own. But then it sucks that it's happening so frequently because it means that I haven't slept for more than a 2-3 hour block in an awfully long time. I've been mostly a walking zombie and it's amazing that I've even been functioning at work at all.

During the weekend, she was cranky and didn't want to nap either. It reminded me of when she was 2 months old (you know, those early days that I so do not want to live over again, even though I just finished saying how I miss those days). The only thing that seemed to console her was going outside, so it meant that the dogs got a lot of walks this weekend.  For the whole week, Gregg and I wondered what was wrong.  She's usually a great sleeper.  I figured it had to be her hip. And I figured it was probably daycare somehow, because I was annoyed at our daycare, and she finally started back up there a couple of weeks ago.  If anything, I figured it was the increased activity at daycare that was making her hips sore.  We had some other fancy explanations floating around too and then, on Sat, we saw that she had 3 front teeth coming through on the top! So guess what?  Nothing to see here, just good old-fashioned teething. 

Also, now, as of yesterday, she has a cold. 

And yesterday, she started at a new daycare.  A Spanish immersion daycare!  Where they believe that kids should be independent and do whatever they can for themselves as soon as they're ready.  And where they seem unconcerned about her brace hindering her too much.  When I put her down in the morning and pushed a few toys her way so that I could talk to the teacher, the teacher told me that they didn't normally do that.  Do what?  I asked.  Hand kids toys apparently.  How will she ever learn to crawl towards her toys on her own if we're always giving her what she wants?  If she wants it, she will find a way to get it.  Is it sad that my first thought was, OMG, my poor deprived baby!?  They won't even let her play with toys here.  She wailed and wailed the whole time I was there, too, so all in all, I was feeling like a terrible parent. 

But oh, by the way, already last week, Diya started trying to crawl with her brace on.  She doesn't quite do it yet, but she does slide and wiggle backwards now.  So this morning, I set her down and what do you know, she scooted over a little bit, ran into a toy and then started pulling it towards her.    And she smiled at the teacher when she saw her, so clearly no one was too abusive to her yesterday. 

And THEN, the huge news is that on Tues, we had a doctor's appointment.  Diya got the first set of x-rays and guess what?  Her hips are doing great!  We didn't somehow manage to pop it out of socket again, like I'd been freaking out about.  It's still exactly where it needs to be.  Even better, the pelvic bone is already starting to re-align itself against the femoral bone.  It's angled less sharply than it was before.  In fact, the doctor said that Diya was ahead of schedule!  AND we can already see the little ball developing between the pelvis and femur (when Diya's hip was out of the socket, that ball didn't form).  It'll take a while for that hip to catch up to the normal left one, but the fact that we can see the ball already alleviates a little more fear about various complications.  Honestly, I didn't quite catch all of it, pretty much tuned out after I heard that our little champ was AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. 

So anyway, I guess all in all, what I mean to say is that it's been a bit rough lately, but suddenly this week, I find myself feeling a little lighter.  When I called the daycare a little while ago, the director told me that Diya was doing very well, cold and teething aside.  She's a very good baby, she said.  Of course, I know this, but I'm probably biased.  And she said, she's worked with many over the years, and she knows -- we definitely have a good one.  So HA, in your face, hip dysplasia and everything else.  My kid's doing pretty darn well.